NASA is facing accusations of sexism after it canceled the first-ever all-women spacewalk due to what officials said was a lack of spacesuits that could be made ready that would fit the women.

Astronauts Anne McClain and Christina Koch were scheduled to take their spacewalk together March 29, but the event was canceled by NASA on Monday “due in part to spacesuit availability.”

According to a press release, only one appropriately sized spacesuit could be made available, so one of the astronauts, McClain, was forced to forfeit her spot.View attachment 6628View attachment 6629
“McClain learned during her first spacewalk that a medium-size hard upper torso — essentially the shirt of the spacesuit — fits her best. Because only one medium-size torso can be made ready by Friday, March 29, Koch will wear it,” NASA said.

The unique event was therefore canceled, and McClain was “tentatively scheduled” to make her spacewalk on April 8 with Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques, a man.

NASA recently selected three winning ideas to compress trash in space with a minimum of fuss.

Because astronauts have limited space in their living quarters — and because nobody likes the danger that ejected space debris poses to spacecraft — dealing with trash is a constant issue for spaceflyers.

That's why NASA, in partnership with the company NineSigma, created a Recycling in Space Challenge to encourage the public to think of ways of processing and feeding trash into a high-temperature reactor. This will allow NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems directorate (which develops prototype systems and validates operational concepts for human exploration), as well as the agency's space technology programs, to develop methods to recycle waste and convert the trash into useful gases.

Three winners were selected from a NASA Tournament Lab crowdsourcing challenge, according to a statement from NASA.

The award recipients are:

Aurelian Zapciu, Romania — $10,000 for first place, Waste Pre-Processing Unit. This uses space-saving features, as well as ejectors that are cam-actuated (they use a rotating or sliding piece in a mechanical system) to move trash through a system. Then, another mechanism brings the waste products into a reactor.

Derek McFall, United States — $2,500 for second place, Microgravity Waste Management System. This uses a hopper to deal with solid waste, as well as controlled air streams for liquid and gaseous waste.

Ayman Ragab Ahmed Hamdallah, Egypt — $2,500 for second place, Trash-Gun (T-Gun). This uses air jets to compress trash before moving it through the system, overcoming the problem of operations in microgravity, where everything floats and makes compression difficult.

The submissions had to take into account several factors besides the lack of gravity, including the amount of space available, the sound level created, and the amount of power used as well as crew safety, according to the NASA statement. The proposed systems couldn't use a lot of consumables, either. (Consumables are items such as oxygen, water and power.)

"The challenge produced ideas that were innovative and that we had not yet considered," Paul Hintze, a judge for the competition, said in the statement. Hintze is also a chemist with NASA's Kennedy Space Center exploration, research and technology programs. "I look forward to further investigating these ideas and hope they will contribute to our human spaceflight missions."

Commanding the Canadian-built robot arm from a control station in the cupola module, McClain guided the arm’s end effector over a grapple pin on the rear end of the Cygnus spaceship as the cargo craft held steady roughly 30 feet (10 meters) below the complex. Mission control in Houston declared a successful capture of Cygnus at 5:28 a.m. EDT (0928 GMT) as the station sailed 258 miles (415 kilometers) over northeastern France.

Northrop Grumman christened the Cygnus the S.S. Roger Chaffee, after the late astronaut who perished in the Apollo 1 fire in 1967 alongside Gus Grissom and Ed White.

“It’s to have the S.S. Roger Chaffee officially on-board, and we look forward to working with the over 7,000 pounds of cargo for the next few months,” McClain radioed moments after the capture of Cygnus.

Engineers on the ground later took over the arm, which launched aboard the space shuttle Endeavour 18 years ago Friday, to place Cygnus on a berthing port on the nadir, or Earth-facing side of the station’s Unity module, where a series of latches and bolts closed to create a firm connection at 7:31 a.m. EDT (1131 GMT).

Friday’s arrival marked the end of a shorter-than-usual rendezvous profile for the Cygnus spacecraft following its launch from Wallops Island, Virginia, on Wednesday aboard an Antares rocket. Northrop Grumman modified the Cygnus flight plan to include a pair of automated altitude boost burns shortly after separation from the Antares launcher, giving the supply ship a head start on the way to the space station.

The change is one of several new upgrades and features on this Cygnus mission, the 11th and last resupply flight by Northrop Grumman under the company’s $2.89 billion cargo transportation contract with NASA signed in 2008. Northrop Grumman has a follow-on contract with NASA for at least six additional Cygnus missions beginning in October.

Under the second contract, Northrop Grumman will provide expanded cargo capacity to NASA, including the ability to load time-sensitive equipment into the ship’s pressurized module less than 24 hours before launch, and the revamped rendezvous profile to get to the station faster. Officials rehearsed the new procedures on this mission, designated NG-11.

On the next Cygnus mission, the Antares rocket’s main engines will fly at higher throttle settings, allowing the mission to carry up to 10 percent more cargo.

The station astronauts planned to open hatches leading to the Cygnus spacecraft’s internal cabin later Friday to begin unpacking the equipment inside, which includes a carrier containing 40 mice for researchers to study their immune systems in space by examining their bodies’ response to tetanus vaccinations. The rodents and their habitat were loaded into the Cygnus supply ship the night before launch, the first time mice have rode a Cygnus mission to the space station.